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Originally Posted by packs
Yogi has no bearing on the conversation. He wasn't a centerfielder, he didn't switch hit, and he wasn't talked about like the second coming, nor did he have the pressure to be one.
I can't overstate what Mantle was able to do. Rarely does any player live up the hype. Mantle exceeded all hype on the biggest team on earth at the time and was the generational player of his time after stepping into the shoes of the generational player of their time (DiMaggio). People are discounting this fact too much.
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Whatever you want to say about Mantle, he certainly did not exceed the hype. In his own words in the Ken Burns documentary, "Casey bragged on me so much saying I was going to be the next Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, and Joe DiMaggio all rolled into one, and it just never happened." As great as Mantle was, he certainly fell far short of people's expectations of him, partly because of his injuries, partly because of his alcoholism, and partly just because of his dedication to baseball, or lack thereof. As Mantle once told Bob Costas about Stan Musial, "He was a better player than I was because he was a better man than I was."